YouTube censors strike again

posted at 12:24 pm on February 28, 2007 by Bryan

Verum Serum has the irony-filled story of Pastor David Williams and his travails at YouTube. Pastor Williams took on a campaign by atheists on YouTube called the “blasphemy challenge.” Atheists challenged YouTubers to post videos of themselves committing blasphemy, and many have risen to the call.

Pastor Williams thought the challenge was silly nonsense, so he posted a video parodying the effort. YouTube yanked that video after just six hours, apparently on complaints that it was “Inappropriate Content.” Williams has since re-posted the video on Google, so you can see it here for yourself. There’s nothing inappropriate about it at all. It’s just good old-fashioned snark, of the type that the Rational Response Squad seems to have hoped to receive, just not from Christians. Verum Serum says that atheists led the charge in getting Williams’ video banned.

This follows closely on the heels of another YouTube censorship scandal, that one involving atheist Nick Gisburne. We profiled him in Vent a few days ago. Gisburne posted video after video slamming Christianity with no problems, but YouTube yanked his videos and killed his account when he posted a video using verses from the Koran to criticize Islam. Christians rose to Gisburne’s defense in spite of his many attacks on Christianity, rightly seeing a threat to his free speech as a threat to our own.

But in the case of Rev. Williams, it seems atheists are content to quash a Christian’s right to criticize them.

It’s just another day on YouTube, virtual land of very real censorship.

One more bit of irony: For now, YouTube’s parent company Google is hosting the Rev. Williams parody video that YouTube pulled down. I’d dearly love to hear from someone within YouTube defending its moves in all of this.

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Just further proof that liberals have a grade school mentality – they cannot stand to hear an opinion that challenges their world view. Any time they do hear something they don’t agree with, they are compelled to throw a temper tantrum.

How do they sleep at night? Youtube and the googlemonster?
The hypocrisy and utter control of speech is just so blatantly obvious. Do they sit back and laugh? Or are they just so obtuse that they don’t get it, or maybe they can’t get it.

I just viewed Pastor Williams video.I am not seeing a content problem here yet undeadyoshi can post a video of a little brown yorki getting blown to bits and theres no prob.Undeadyoshi seemed to think blowing up a puppy was hilarious and I guess youtube does too.

It’s possible that a Christian with a thick skull or no sense of humor complained, rather than the admin’s deliberate move to silence atheists’ critics.

windbag on February 28, 2007 at 1:51 PM

I thought the same thing at first, but, YouTube has been completely unwilling in the past to remove blantantly anti-Christian material, so, I doubt that YouTube would remove it if it was just the Christians complaining about the vid.

On the other hand, why would they remove it on behalf of the Athiests? After all, polls show that they are the least liked/trusted people in America…..

Hmm…perhaps that’s it. The folks at YouTube are pretty sure that they can leave anti-Christian vids up and nothing will happen. Well, someone might pray for them, but they’ll survive. However, with those wiley athiests, you just don’t know what they’ll do. So, when they start complaining, you’d better listen. Never know when they might go Pol Pot on your behind….

YouTube is quickly turning itself into a parody of itself….at which point, it becomes worthless long before the Google folks ever figured out a way to make money with it.

Pastor David just sent me an e-mail saying that although YouTube won’t tell him who flagged it he suspects it was some atheist kids who didn’t realize what a net negative it would be for their cause. He thinks the Rational Response Squad (the folks behind the blasphemy challenge) are too media savvy to do something this dumb.

Maybe so…then again, they probably know that no one is going to reveal who complained. They certainly have the most invested in not letting the blasphemy challenge become a laughingstock.

Anyway, David’s glad a few extra people are seeing his clip and he’s keeping his sense of humor about the whole thing.

I used to help run a site called the Anomalies Network. The site used to be populated with folks from the Right, Left, Middle, Conspiracy Theorists, Debunkers and Skeptics alike.

The loudest shouters usually managed to get their voice heard, but generally they degenerated into a name-calling fest very often, especially when I would step in and ask for “proof” or “facts” or “real data”.

Eventually, I came to be known as “a Nazi Fascist” because, you know obviously I am because I’m right-wing and you know, I was, like, you know… questioning the creeps.. er, pardon me, people there.

The day came when someone said “This is 1984 and you’re part of the Groupthink crowd” (aiming this at me of course, because I QUESTIONED things they said).

I guess the day is inevitable, when we will (we on the right of course) will all be called part of Orwell’s Legacy….

Hmmm. A recognizable pattern is starting to emerge and coalesce in my consciousness. YouTube, Google, Microsoft, the open-source crowd, and many others involved in so-called high-tech industries…all advocating, pushing, funding, or enforcing some flavor or variant of the liberal agenda. Anybody besides me notice that, in addition to drug pushers, the people running these industries are the only other group of people (at least, on the record) that commonly refer to their customers as “users” ? It’s enough to make a conspiracy theorist out-o-ya’.

CBS never posted my comments to their videos that were critical. Free speech for those who think like them.

Remember everyone some people have more free speech than others. Especially people who have all day to sit around and be non-productive members of society in blog world while those of us who toil the day away can only grab snippets and control only a small bit of influence.

if someone did a study… they would discover the people who have all the influence on these blogs and control the speech at them tend to be of the non-productive part of society, mostly “liberal” unemployed or if employed leeching members of whatever company can’t or won’t fire them because they are protected by whatever insane laws that exist in this country that keep dead wood on company payrolls the country round.

Christians rose to Gisburne’s defense in spite of his many attacks on Christianity, rightly seeing a threat to his free speech as a threat to our own.

The very concept of individual personal freedom is rooted in Judeo-Christian principles and thought (just ask the Founding Fathers). Small wonder that those who opppose the truth want restrictions on these freedoms.

The very concept of individual personal freedom is rooted in Judeo-Christian principles and thought (just ask the Founding Fathers). Small wonder that those who opppose the truth want restrictions on these freedoms.

infidel4life on February 28, 2007 at 10:33 PM

“infidel4life,”

That is debatable and not borne out by history.

One would have to ignore all the Kings, Queens, Emperors, and so on, who were involved in the Judeo-Christian continuum.

Samuel was an Old Testament Prophet, while Saul was the King.

Solomon was a king.

Did Moses lead the people as a Democracy, a Republic with Democratic elements in which representative of the people were elected?

Look at Europe. It was wife with Kings and Queens “God Save the King,” and “God Save the Queen,” who represented Christianity in Old Europe. The Kings and Queens were the champions of Christianity.

Many of the most Christian countries have the most horrible conditions. Most of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia were rife with Christianity at one time, while they were also ruled by kings. The spread of Islam changed the face of the Middle East, South Asia, Asia, and Northern Africa, as what was once predominantly Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, Jewish, and so on, became predominantly Muslim. Islamic history is rife with Sheiks, Sultans, and so on.

Christianity has been practiced in countries throughout the world which were communist, such as countries in Central America, South America, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Many Christian populations live in utter poverty under an oppressive, well fed, well heeled leadership, such as Mexico, and elsewhere, were the good of the people is an illusion and a joke. This leadership is outwardly devoutly Christian as well.

The United States of America is an experiment in which self government without a king is the original history. We elect our representatives, but we are not a Democracy, we are a Representative government. If we were a Democracy we would vote for each and every thing, rather than send representatives to speak for us.

If you want to see what happens with a pure Democracy, just look at Digg and YouTube. Everyone who wants to trash a conservative video, or a video which quotes passages from Islamic beliefs, letting Islam itself reveal its own violent, hate filled system, such as from the Q’ran, is flagged by those who exercise their “Democratic” muscle and complain about the Video, thus censoring that video, and hence censoring that free and informative speech.

No, we must think before we make claims about the concept of individual personal freedom being rooted in Judeo-Christian principles and thought when history does not support that specious claim.

You’d be amazed at how much of the tech industry is conservative, we just can’t sit on our butts all day like our liberal colleagues posting to blogs and whatnot, we have work to do.

James on February 28, 2007 at 9:05 PM

James,

I have suggested to my wife, and others who are somewhat conservative-libertarian in their world view and in their life that many of these fifth columnists-leftists-liberals who trash the US, and who are out in force breaking windows to shops, looting, pillaging, attacking those nearby who do not agree with them, attacking police officers, setting fires, carrying offensive signs (and they get offended when pro-lifers show color posters of aborted babies – “Oh, that is gross, that is so offensive!” they say. But THEY can be offensive and public and that’s Okay!) protesting anything other than what many of us who actually do something believe in, actually don’t work, live off welfare, the state, the government, and, of course, live off of mommy and daddy, or sponge off their rich left wing, US bashing friends and acquaintances.

They don’t carry the load, they merely stand around and mock and criticize, or they actually help make the load heavier and more burdensome!

Is it atheists that flagged his video or just liberals? I mean, there isn’t a vast atheist movement plotting in the back alleys developing strategies to bring down religion; or at least if there is I never got the memo. Becuase I’m an athiest. But (I beleive) like most athiests I don’t care (or mind) what religion people follow. Whatever makes them happy, as long as they’re not trying to slice off my head or toss a homicide bomber into a market. Just as there are Christians in the Democratic party, there are athiests who are Conservative you know. So labeling this attempt of censorship on ‘athiests’ I think is a misnomer; it’s more likely an attempt by the nutroots to silence speech they don’t like. As usual.

Want some more irony? The obviously racist “Jew Watch” is still alive and well on YouTube.

So here’s the *next* YouTube challenge: Make and post three word-for-word identical spots to Jew Watch (best is three different spokespeople/accounts) to YouTube, except change the target group in each one.

Jesus tapdancing christ – does this even MATTER? So site won’t put your video up, another won’t link your article… so what? Who gives a toss? It’s not as if anything you are printing or ‘youtube-casting’ is not being said elsewhere – a thousand times over.

This is such a non-story, there are better things to get your panties all bunched up about.

I also find it highly amusing that both the right-wing nutters and your leftie counter-parts are now complaining about the self same thing… “No one wants to link / read / view / comment on my story – it got Dugg down / removed / marked as spam” – Diddums. You are entitled to an opinion – just don’t think that you are entitled to plaster it where you like, when you like, without some sort of reaction.